What is Bazball? All you need to know about this attacking style of cricket
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Rishabh Pant
Rishabh Pant had smashed a quick 111-ball 146 runs and left the cricket fraternity in awe at Edgbaston on Friday, July 1 in the rescheduled fifth Test agaisnt England. His knock helped to revive team India’s innings when they were struggling at 98/5. He stayed at the crease with a 222-run stand with Ravindra Jadeja to help India’s score cross 300 at the end of Day 1. Praising Rishabh Pant, the Three Lions’ assistant coach and former cricketer Paul Collingwood called Pant’s innings as Bazball.
But what is Bazball? Well, it’s simply is the way former New Zealand captain and current England Test coach Brendon McCullum used to play his cricket by lashing attacks to the opponent.
Bazball will make Test cricket interesting, says Collingwood
“Pant came out to play a bit of Bazball (comparison with Brendon McCullum, the England Test head coach) as everyone keeps calling it. When you have a bit of moisture in the pitch early on, you have a chance to take early wickets, which is what we did. We’re going against the grain of much of the cricket that’s been played over the last 100 years… We are trying to play as positive as possible, and play entertaining cricket. Ben (Stokes) is not going to take a backwards step,” Collingwood said.
He also believes that Pant’s Bazball innings displayed that Test cricket is changing fast and that Bazball will make it more interesting.
“(McCullum) said right from the start about the bigger picture of Test cricket and that for it to survive, we’ve got to make it much more entertaining, and today’s cricket was entertaining. There were wickets, there were runs, there were great catches. When you’re watching someone as entertaining as Pant, you’ve got to applaud an innings like that,” added Collingwood.
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Gouri Das
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